I flatter myself in the expectation that my absence here of late may have been noted with some modicum of longing for my return, and should you find yourself in the throes of such paroxysms I cry, fear not!

This time of year calls upon my personal, creative, and professional energies on a level as no other, and as with squeezing a balloon, for more air to be forced into one place, it must however temporarily vacate another.

And so the shape of my Life, as for that of all things, burns its oyles in seasonally driven cycles — after all, Winter is coming! — but counterbalancing those that drain are the others that stand as restorative callings to Mindfulness of my chosen Path.

For us, September, and all that heralds it, brings a maelstrom of delights, and of those remembered upon this very day, are two of the most important — the moment in the early morning hours of this date in 2001 when I kissed for the very first time my incomparable Mate, upon whom I would sire my three sons; and another, 12 years later nearly to the minute, when the first of those met the world. To anyone who sees mere coincidence in the timing of those two events I would answer, Indie, you are digging in the wrong place.

On this, the 5th birthday of Viktor Ryszard Lawrence Whynacht, the only one of those he’ll ever have, my focus will be upon the air in his part of the balloon.